Every Saint Has A Past
by halcyonics
Summary: LiveJournal comm twilight20 theme set gamma for the pairing Jasper/Maria. Each chapter is a oneshot, to be posted out of order as I finish the prompts. Set between 1863 & 1945 in the Texas and Mexico. Sisterfic to Every Sinner Has A Future coming soon .


**04. meaning  
**

**somewhere east of Zapata, Texas****  
United States  
1910**

The slanted afternoon sun turned her skin to liquid gold. Jasper traced the bump of an old scar up and over the curve of her hip, into a thin shaft of light that glittered beneath his fingertips. But she caught his wrist before he could go on, and dropped it between them on the bed.

"No soy un gatito, Jasper. Stop."

He tucked the offending hand behind his head and rolled onto his back, his eyes drifting up to the old ceiling as he listened to the crisp, dry sound of Maria turning the pages of a book beside him. It was just after Navidad, and the fire left by the previous tenants of the old dogtrot house was still glowing in the hearth, those dying embers the only source of warmth in the room.

"You will like some of these books, I think. Here is another by Tolstoy. Bondad, escribió mucho."

"He died last month," Jasper commented as he took it from her. _Resurrection. _Its publication dated it some eleven years before, but this was the first he'd heard of it.

Maria glanced at the title and smirked. "Cómo irónico. Take it with you. And this one." She handed him something new by a man named London, and he raised an eyebrow at her as her mood turned amused. Grinning, she leaned over the side of the bed to grab up another. "There's a large stack here. These people were regular _filósofos_."

At that Jasper chuckled, his eyes on _The Call of the Wild_ as he let the stiff spine crack open in his hands. "I doubt it. Russian and English are hardly akin to Greek and Latin."

"You and your dead languages," Maria sighed in a bored tone, as she rolled over onto her back and looked up to watch him. "You are so obsessed with the dead, Piédro. The living are important, too."

"Cómo irónico," he said dryly, peering down at her from over the top of the book with a smirk of his own. She only rolled her eyes and turned away from him while Jasper, shrugging, reached over her for the Tolstoy book.

"It isn't the dead, it's the impermanence of life, juxtaposed with the same eternal frustrations." His voice turned soft as he ran his fingers over the lightly worn leather, his eyes seeing through it to the pages telling of a life thousands of miles away from his own, lived by another man in another world, and yet so similar in all the right ways. And now he, too, was gone. Jasper sighed. So young, comparatively. "They all die asking the same questions."

"Sí, sí," Maria sighed again, though her mood mostly patient. "And they will continue to do so, because their lives are too short to do anything better with. Pero _nosotros_, mi Piédro." She grinned as her aura shifted fluidly into an eager sort of teasing. "We will conquer _worlds_ before we die, and still live long enough to rule them."

"Monterrey is hardly, the world," Jasper pointed out with wry amusement, but Maria only laughed it off and peered up at him with a challenge in her eyes.

"Monterrey, and _then_ the world."

"And how many times," Jasper wanted to know, setting the book aside so that he could lean over her upside-down, "are we to conquer Monterrey before we graduate to the rest of the world?"

Maria reached up and ran her fingertip down the bridge of his nose, a twisted smile tugging at her lips as she arched an eyebrow. "Why, did you have something better to do?"

"I'm just curious." Jasper reached up to tuck some of his hair behind his ear thoughtfully. "I'm nearly seventy years old, and I've never been further east than Virginia."

"That is pretty far east," Maria commented dryly, "but if you would like to go further, then go. But go briefly, so that I will still be here when you get back."

Jasper considered that for a moment, but ultimately it was as it always was; a bleak prospect, when he had so much for himself here and so little waiting for him anywhere else. He leaned forward and pressed a chaste upside-down kiss to her lips.

"I have nowhere to go alone. The world will still be there when I decide I want to see it."

"If you ever do." She kissed him back softly before losing interest entirely and giving him a piercing look. "Examinarlo. These curiosities you have, they cannot be satisfied by anyone but yourself."

Jasper sighed. She was right, of course, but as much as he wanted to explore someplace new, he was reluctant to leave all he already knew behind. Not when he had no pressing urge to go, and all the time in the world to postpone it. Tilting his head thoughtfully, he met Maria's waiting eyes and tapped the pad of his finger against her lips as he smiled softly.

"I'll promise to consider that if you promise to consider a treaty with Laredo."

Her mood soured immediately as her lips turned down into a scowl. Jasper twisted his own up into a smirk as he watched.

"¿De acuerdo?"

"I do not make _treaties_, Piédro," she scoffed, her voice sharpening as she pointed to the two cooling human bodies on the floor beside the bed. "_That_ is what I make, and nothing less. They will surrender or they will die."

Jasper had to keep himself from grinning as he rolled away and settled comfortably onto his back again, his arms pillowed beneath his head. "You keep me around for my military intelligence," he mused airily, "and yet you refuse to use it. _Cómo irónico_."

"Your methods are outdated," Maria said derisively, her aura a roiling cloud of irritation. "Stop coming up with ways to concede to those _idiotas_, and start applying yourself to their _defeat_."

"You mean annihilation," Jasper corrected. Maria shrugged and waved her hand dismissively, quickly calming herself at his lighthearted tone.

"Whichever you prefer."

"I would prefer to make a treaty with them—" Jasper began conversationally, but raised his voice and firmed his tone when Maria made a rude sound and rolled her eyes, "—and then cut them down one by one as they grow accustomed to our presence."

"You are forgetting that such deception begins with a _treaty_," Maria spat.

"A faux treaty."

"Still a _treaty_."

Jasper shrugged. "I think you're placing too much importance on the illusion of compliance."

"And I think I am placing just enough."

There was a moment of silence, in which Jasper listened to the weakening crackle of the spent fire, and Maria's mood shifted from mild annoyance to curling curiosity. He glanced down when he realized she was watching him, but she only tilted her head at his inquisitive look and moved to crawl into his lap.

"You know," she purred softly, "I do not _only_ keep you around for your expertise." She trailed her lips over a cluster of scars just beneath his collarbone, urging Jasper to tilt his head back for her as he brought his hands down to curl around her thighs. He let an appreciative sigh slide from his lungs and closed his eyes.

"You know," he replied conspiratorially, "I don't only stay for the blood." She chuckled lightly and rested her chin against his chest to look up at him deviously.

"Your appetite suggests otherwise."

He peeked an eye open to grin at her. "I just do as I'm told."

That made her smirk, wry amusement coloring her aura as she pushed at his chest to hold him down, shifting to settle into a seated position while his fingers danced over her hips.

"Oh, Piédro. You are more insatiable than I." She swept her hand out to indicate their two freshest kills, but Jasper only wrinkled his nose.

"They're going to smell if we don't get them out of here soon. Or did you want to leave tonight?"

"We will leave whenever your protégé decides to come looking for us."

Her mood had turned into a deviousness that made Jasper's lips threaten to twitch up into an amused grin. "You told him to stay put."

"I did, didn't I." Her voice was smooth as she slid languidly over his skin, her mood a mixture of playful smugness and a self-satisfied sense of triumph that only heightened Jasper's amusement. She wasn't normally one to employ petty power game tactics with one of her subordinates, let alone one as young and rash as this new Peter.

"You know," he reasoned with the brush of his hand along the small of her back, "your antics may backfire. He may be discouraged from waiting at all, the next time you ask it of him."

His words made Maria smirk, her dark eyes holding his as she arched like a cat and watched him follow the sun's thin thread of light as it danced along her skin. "Then you will just have to kill him after all," she murmured matter-of-factly. "And we will look again, and we will find you another, one who _we_ choose and one who is useful." She leaned in to scrape her teeth possessively up the column of his throat, and he could feel the upward curve of her lips as his soft moan elicited a small surge in her growing lust. Moving to his ear, her voice turned teasing as her aura turned mischievous. "One who will concentrate on the 'how' instead of the 'why', for a change."

Jasper was slowly melting back into the bed as he allowed himself to relax beneath her ministrations and her desires, but her allusion to his own insatiable curiosity made him pause and smile a little, and nip carefully at the corner of her jaw. "And…why is it that we do this, again?"

He felt her tremble against him in a silent chuckle for a moment before she pulled back and brushed her lips over his, and nothing but confidence and a steadfast sense of conviction laced her words.

"Why do we do anything, Piédro? Because it can be done."

* * *

**Spanish:**

_No soy un gatito:_ I am not a kitten.

_Bondad, escribió mucho:_ Goodness, he wrote a lot.

_Cómo irónico:_ How ironic.

_filósofos:_ philosophers

_Pero nosotros:_ But us.

_Examinarlo:_ Consider it.

_¿De acuerdo?:_ Deal?

_idiotas:_ idiots

I'm aware that Piédro is the Spanish equivalent of Peter. This does not, however, refer to Peter. Peter refers to Peter, and Piédro refers to Jasper. It's a nickname of sorts, and Maria came up with it long before Peter was around. The etymology of his name amuses her:

_piédra_ = rock/stone = _Piédro de Sangre_ = blood rock (literally rock of blood) = Jasper (which is a type of blood-red stone)


End file.
